### ODT Online Sat, 24 Oct 2015Planning for the city’s future (Part I)
By Chris Morris
Property owners face new rules but the city’s heritage is in for a boost, as the Dunedin City Council pushes ahead with a new district plan for the city. Thousands of properties across Dunedin will be covered by new rules designed to protect against natural hazards. But, according to Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull, the city needs to face up to the threats. Doing nothing is not an option. […] The [proposed] plan has already ruffled feathers from the Taieri to the inner city, amid concerns about the impact on property prices, insurance premiums and future development plans.Read more

38 responses to “DCC and the AWFUL 2GP ‘threat of THREATS’”

All owners of hazard-zoned land should familiarise themselves with the 2GP and be asking the appropriate questions of council staff. — Anna Leslie, Macandrew Bay resident

### ODT Online Sun, 25 Oct 20152GP zoning questioned
By Craig Borley
Macandrew Bay is an area with a history of slips – something that is recognised in the 2GP. Chunks of the Otago Peninsula suburb have been zoned “hazard 1” and “hazard 2” because of the area’s instability’ issues. But while landowners have always known about the slip risk, the 2GP’s hazard zoning brings significant changes.Read more

****

Whether future developments were no longer possible or required expensive resource consents, the spectre of those barriers was “likely” to limit property prices. –Liz Nidd, AREINZ

I am going to make a Public Forum submission to the next meeting of the full Council on Monday 30 November, asking that the public consultation period for the proposed Dunedin District Plan Review (2GP) be extended. I think there are good grounds for this. I haven’t checked whether the law has been changed but I think the consultation period for the introduction of a new District Plan was three months. 2GP virtually IS a new Plan it is so different from the current one. This is an extremely critical point in Dunedin’s history with regards to effective preservation of heritage buildings and neighbourhoods. It may be the LAST CHANCE in some cases. So I think it’s really important that people who care about these issues have time to work out how to make really good, comprehensive and well-argued submissions to the proposed Plan Review.

Applause, Diane.
More of us should have considered doing exactly this at the October full council meeting.
However, since 2GP submissions close on 24 November – waiting that extra week for the 30 November council meeting is almost a bit late.

Would you consider asking for a Public Forum before a standing committee meeting, for example:

Oh dear, time goes so fast! Thank you for pointing out that closing date to me. Yes, I will go to those two committees. It’s the best I can do under the circumstances. I have replied to your other post – with questions abut the ‘cross submission’ process.

Mayor Dave Cull says “the city needs to face up to the threats. Doing nothing is not an option.” He sure dribbled a bib full there. The full attack is formulated and led by Dr Johnson. We don’t know what her doctorate is, but odds are it is a PhD in ‘irrelevancy’ from Otago University. She is in full flight here. Mr Cull says “the plan would play a hugely important part in the city’s future.” That’s assuming it has a future by the time this 1600-page tome, manipulated by Dr Johnson and her army of little gremlins don’t drive away all those who can go, leaving the hapless survivors to battle along in a town diminishing in both population and value. Planning itself to death is the best description. This council seems to revel in control at any cost. Makes you wonder how the city ever got to be where it is.

Says it all. Creator of projects, both living off, and creating developments from OPM’s for whatever reasons might fill in the day and seem to justify the need for control of any and everyone’s destinies. Fascism in bureaucratic mind speak. What this beleaguered town doesn’t need, but will, like castor oil have tossed down our throats without choice, thanks to a hapless elected body unable to face the torrents of bureaucratic brain farts.

DCC got the cycleways wrong. DCC got the stadium wrong. Now Mayor Cull and the City Development Team (the climate changers and hazards people) want to wreck your private property values, cultural heritage, happy backyards and succession.

TheBeatlesVEVO Published on Oct 20, 2015The Beatles – Revolution
“When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out”

“I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single: as a statement of The Beatles’ position on Vietnam and The Beatles’ position on revolution. For years, on The Beatles’ tours, Brian Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war.” – John Lennon.

“Plugging directly into the Abbey Road desk and pushing the needles into the red achieved the fuzz-guitar sound. According to George Martin “We got into distortion on that, which we had a lot of complaints from the technical people about. But that was the idea: it was John’s song and the idea was to push it right to the limit. Well, we went to the limit and beyond.”

“Revolution” was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and filmed on the 4th September 1968 at Twickenham Film Studios.

What I don’t like about the proposed District Plan is the ‘academic writing’. It’s true you can use this compilation of rules to look up just what affects your own property and then, if necessary, get a council planner to explain to you how what you can do on your property will be constrained. But any overview of what kind of city residents have collectively decided to plan for (that’s the theory) is extremely hard to discern. Here’s a link criticizing academic writing and giving examples of how it becomes so distant from everyday conversational speech.http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/why_academics_stink_at_writing.pdf?m=1412010988

What Pinker (above) says about nominalizations: “Those vacuous terms refer to metaconcepts: concepts about concepts, such as approach, assumption, concept, condition, context, framework, issue, level, model, perspective, process, prospect, role, strategy, subject, tendency, and variable.”
It would be interesting to do a word audit of the proposed plan and see how many nominalizations are used.

Person on the street should be able to understand the District Plan – Ms Johnson has this idea that the 2GP is for planning professionals and lawyers. She’s been at a DCC desk too long on too high a salary. She forgets that some of us don’t have any intention to ‘lawyer up’ in reading, submitting or appealing to a higher authority – while DCC defends itself using ratepayer funded experts. Others in society will pay for professional advocacy and representation. In the end, a judge is after common sense writing and interpretation.

A major intent of the Agenda 21 plan is to impoverish citizens such that they will become beholden to the state. As the major wealth of Dunedinites is their freehold property, the Dunedin City Council with its slavish adherence to Agenda 21 principles is intent upon devaluing your property.

If you’re not included in this obvious shakedown of the 2 GP, then keep watching. Your turn is coming.

Your only hope is to cull those major Agenda 21 adherents.

That seems to me to include all the Greater Dunedin fiasco and probably all of the green and left candidates as well. It will take some tough strong leaders to reverse this theft of your personal wealth by the stealth of the Agenda 21 manifesto.

A cultural Marxist or social engineer undertakes massive rule writing exercises under the notion that they are doing good. They don’t attempt to correlate whether their rule changes brought more good or more bad. Never look backwards, only forward. All these rules lock us into a fool’s vision. The intentions are perhaps good, but the impact is cost through a million tiny tyrannies. No-one is clever enough to think through all the ramifications of these decisions. They should get the hell out of the way and let people decide through prices. Council should stick to water management. Seems to me a potentially nasty piece of work.

Hey! I’ve just realised what DCC stands for. Dunedin Comedy Central. I have in front of me a 50 page classic comic called the “2015 Residents’ Opinion Survey” results report. It’s a kind of numerical parody of segments of trivia which would have cost God alone knows how much.
Produced by some outfit calling itself “VERSUS Research”. Presumably a consultant specialist. Insufficient in house staff would be the excuse. ‘Specifically this approach involved contacting 4,500 residents randomly selected from the Electoral Roll. Selection is proportional to suburb to ensure geographic representation with those with current addresses replaced with an identical geographic representative.’ So there you go. Letters were posted to the 4,500 randomly selected residents inviting them to undertake the survey. This resulted in 747 completed online surveys. Further reminders resulted in a further 155 online surveys plus a total of 250 postal surveys by cut off date. The final number a total of 1122 completed surveys. This results in a margin of error of 1/2.9 at the 95% confidence interval. Got that? Let’s just look at one issue as on page 4.
“Primary Mode of Transport to Work.”
Drove alone 41%
Drove with passengers 10%
Walk or Jog 7%
Work from home 6%
Public bus 4%
Passenger in vehicle 4%
Bicycle 1%
Motorbike 1%
Residents used form of transport not listed 2%
Answers not applicable 25%
That I think is enough. Suffice to say the rest is pretty much graphs confirming high degrees of satisfaction as you would expect. As despot Joseph Stalin famously quipped, “It’s not the votes that count. It’s who counts the votes.”
All in all a compilation of comic trivia which can only be described as ‘wasteful claptrap’.
We truly do live in “La La Land”.

I like “VERSUS Research”, suggestion being it’s an abbreviation of the original “Pick a number, add your birth year, divide by 3 and multiply by EITHER the number of times you’ve been off your face since you left school OR Neil Diamond’s shoe size” VERSUS “research”.
It’s too long to be catchy. No wonder it was abbreviated.

To be fair to Councillor Whiley, staff members addressing the council at meeting are often barely introduced by the chair and then addressed only by their first names. You may see in the agenda that a certain named person will be giving a report but sometimes there are two sitting side by side. Look at DCC meeting videos and see if you can work who that staff member addressing the meeting is and what their official designation is. It can be quite hard. And then sometimes the chair asks for a ruling on how Standing Orders should be interpreted or other legal considerations or whether a proposed resolution might have unintended consequences. Then you will hear (or might hear, as is not amplified) a voice from the other side of the room where governance staff sit but, unless you already happen to know who’s who, you won’t have a clue who is talking.
Here’s the view of a recent DCC Public Forum submitter who did not like the lay out of the [Council Chamber].https://fossilfoolsnz.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/time-travel-with-the-dunedin-city-council/

I don’t like the [Council Chamber] either. [It is] not only historic – [it is] archaic. I think that the seminar room at the Art Gallery would be better for council meetings and the [Council Chamber] would make a better art gallery – or museum.
It’s very bad when staff remain ‘faceless’ and unknown. Last Council meeting, I recall Cr Calvert asking who wrote a report and being told a single name – to which she replied that she was pleased there was a name and only a single author. Bureaucratic reports too often conceal the author by using the passive voice eg ‘it is believed that …’. No. Readers, councillors and public alike need to know who it is exactly who believes it – and then they can ask that actual human being why. i.e make them accountable. Okay, I admit it – I didn’t know who the City Development Manager was either. After all, the title could mean anything.

—

[Corrections made. The Municipal Chambers building is obvious by its clocktower and foremost articulated public entry stair on the Octagon leading to the first floor. The Dunedin Town Hall building sits behind Municipal Chambers, its formal entries facing Harrop Street and Moray Place. The buildings are very significant and architecturally distinct historic heritage properties, being well maintained in public ownership to the credit of the city council. Recent redevelopment work by DCC has connected the two buildings internally for greater use and flexibility as well as enhanced horizontal and vertical navigation. -Eds]

I see a mission, aiming for similar excellence achieved by Parliament TV, now that Council meetings are televised the Chair has to be trained up as The Speaker. Unfortunately, Dave is untrainable and his job skills don’t fit the new position. Next please.

The Organisational Chart for DCC shows where the City Development Manager sits, who the CDM reports to and who reports to the CDM.

Ohhh The Chart has not been refreshed and published for a while under the current CEO’s direction. Or lack of direction. It used to be published each year in the annual plan as a critical public reference by Jim Harland, even. And rightly so.

Another LGOIMA request coming on.

The writer of the Proposed 2GP is Anna Johnson, City Development Manager.

I confused the Council Chamber with the Municipal Chambers. And in the past I have confused the Municipal Chambers with the Town Hall. But I think many people would. I wondered if other councils had meetings in the ‘council meeting room’ and the ‘committee meeting rooms’ in the ‘town hall.’ Which would be a lot easier to understand. Then I stumbled across this (out-of-date) news report about live streaming. Link below is about video. But even audio live streaming (re-playable) would be really good and better than having to wait even two days for the meetings videos to come out. Live broadcasting is very close to being as good as actually being present as an observer because it is unedited. DCC meeting videos can be edited … or lost. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9970604/Auckland-Council-to-beam-live

28.10.15 ODT: Economics favoured over landscape values
Some of the changes outlined in the Queenstown Lakes District Council proposed district plan, especially in rural areas, are ideologically driven and senseless, writes Julian Haworth.

Julian Haworth is secretary/treasurer of the Upper Clutha Environmental Society. He has been a committee member of the society since its inception in 1995. This article represents his own views.

O yes indeedy: “ideologically driven and senseless”.
Planking came and went. Grumpy Cat is a fixture. But “ideologically driven and senseless”, that goes from strength to strength.
Look around, brothers and sisters. There’s an example right close to you wherever you dwell, here in Godzone Country. Praise the Bylor’d!

### ODT Online Sat, 31 Oct 2015Document directs city expansion (Part 2)
By Chris Morris and Craig Borley
Dunedin’s second generation district plan will play a big part in the city’s growth. […] Among the new approaches outlined by the 2GP was the creation of new “transition zones”, identifying areas earmarked for future residential and industrial growth.

The zones identified about 25 areas on the fringe of the central city for future residential growth, four areas for new industrial development and an expansion of the harbourside zone.

Harbourside vision
The plan sought to simplify the rules governing the mixed-use zone covering the harbourside area south of Steamer Basin, to encourage a future built around cafes, bars, restaurants and apartments. […] The result could be the eventual demolition of the wharf altogether, while development instead occurred in a staged manner on land.

Retail activity
The city was grappling with a retail retraction, fuelled by the rise of internet shopping, which left the city with “far too much land” for retail and office use.Read more

“Many in the rural community will not be aware of the dramatic changes to the subdivision rules applying to their properties.” –Tony Devereux

### ODT Online Sat, 31 Oct 2015Farmers urged to look closely at plan
By Craig Borley
[…] Spring was hectic for farmers, so the timing of the 2GP’s public consultation might have left it in the too-hard basket for many, Mr Devereux said. “This plan arrived at the busiest time in the farming year. And the change in the rural zones was not notified personally, to individual farmers, by letters.”Read more

This 2GP will consume vast amounts of time, money, turn cold air into hot, burn midnight oil (to Jinty’s disgust) and all the while the diminishing demographics of the city will determine the retail activity, the farmers will continue to tail their lambs and the biting Nor’easterly will lash the harbourside area south of Steamer Basin taking the froth off the top of whatever coffee bars dare to set up there. It’s all a gigantic exercise in bull…t, a specialty of Dave Cull.

If you think about #eqnz and the aftermath of the Christchurch quakes, or if you haven’t been settled by your insurer following this year’s South Dunedin flood (see DCC management of mud tanks and stormwater pumping station filters??!!) on 3 June – would you, could you, believe anything from the insurance industry in NZ. For many, who can afford insurance anyway.

—

### ODT Online Sun, 1 Nov 2015No need for hazard zone fear: insurers
By Craig Borley
Dunedin landowners whose property is in one of the 2GP’s hazard zones need not fear the cold shoulder, the insurance industry says. Thousands of Dunedin properties fall into the new hazard zones included in the 2GP. […] But having those hazards included in the new district plan was unlikely to have any great effect on the cost or availability of insurance for the land’s owners, Insurance Australia Group Ltd (IAG) spokesman Craig Dowling said.Read more

“Doctor Anna” gives the usual cue-card reply: landowner should express concerns in a submission.
Looks like Keith Newton already tried to communicate his concerns, wouldn’t that be how he got told by council staff that his suitably qualified person was “cavalier”?
And with that staff attitude already entrenched he’s supposed to go to the trouble of making a submission, with the help of staff (noted “staff” again, did you?) and believe it won’t be received with contempt again?
Great process, great problem-solving techniques, great steaming piles of horse-shit.
Same old rituals of consultation which are supposed to kid us that we’ve got rights. Nah, Doctor Anna & Co, all you’re offering is rites.

That terrible shock when following the close of submissions on 24 November you find your (status quo pristine) hunk of land has been mired in red tape by DCC, and the bastards didn’t even send you a letter beforehand to say they wanted to pull the rug from under you with a hazard zone of their imagination not based on ANY geotech reports.

Keith Newton isn’t quite in this group, obviously. But someone else I know in the inner city has been blindsided this way (no letter) by Doctor Anna dolly medicine.